Gaian Wholism

Food of the Gods, Terence McKenna Chapter 6

THE VEGETABLE MIND

In view of our present cultural impasse, I conclude that the next evolutionary step must involve not only a repudiation of dominator culture but an Archaic Revival and a rebirth of awareness of the Goddess. Implicit in the ending of profane and secular history is the notion of our involvement with the reemergence of the vegetable mind. That same mind that coaxed us into self-reflecting language now offers us the boundless landscapes of the imagination. This is the same vision of human fulfillment through the "Divine Imagination" that was presciently glimpsed by William Blake. Without such a visionary relationship to psychedelic exopheromones that regulate our symbiotic relationship with the plant kingdom, we stand outside of an understanding of planetary purpose. And understanding planetary purpose may be the major contribution that we can make to the evolutionary process. Returning to the balance of the planetary partnership style means trading the point of view of the egoistic dominator for the intuitional, feeling-toned understanding of the maternal matrix.

A rethinking of the role that hallucinogenic plants and fungi have played in the promotion of human emergence from primate organization can help lead to a new appreciation of the unique confluence of factors responsible and necessary for the evolution of human beings. The widely felt intuition of the presence of the Other as a goddess can be traced back to society's immersion in the vegetable mind. This sense of the female companion explains the persistent intrusion of themes of the mother/goddess even into the most patriarchal domains. The persistence of the cult of Mary in Christianity is a case in point, as is the fervor reserved for the cult of Kali, the destroying mother, and the idea of the divine Purusha in Hinduism. The anima mundi, the soul of the world, of Hermetic thought is another image of the Goddess of the World. Ultimately, all of these female images are reducible to the archetype of the original vegetable mind. Immersion in the psychedelic experience provided the ritual context in which human consciousness emerged into the light of self-awareness, self-reflection, and self-articulation into the light of Gaia, the Earth herself. 

GAIAN HOLISM 

Deconstruction of dominator cultural values means promotion of what might be called a sense of Gaian Holism-that is, a sense of the unity and balance of nature and of our own position within that dynamic, evolving balance. It is a plant-based view. This return to a perspective on self and ego that places them within the larger context of planetary life and evolution is the essence of the Archaic Revival. Marshall McLuhan was correct to see that planetary human culture, the global village, would be tribal in character. The next great step toward a planetary holism is the partial merging of the technologically transformed human world with the Archaic matrix of vegetable intelligence that is the Transcendent Other. 

I hesitate to characterize this dawning awareness as religious, yet that is what it surely is. And it will involve a full exploration of the dimensions revealed by plant hallucinogens, especially those structurally related to neurotransmitters already present in the human brain. Careful exploration of the plant hallucinogens will probe the most Archaic and sensitive level of the drama of the emergence of consciousness: the plant-human quasi-symbiotic relationship that characterized archaic society and religion and through which the numinous mystery was originally experienced. And this experience is no less mysterious for us today, in spite of the general assumption that we have replaced the simple awe of our ancestors with philosophical and epistemic tools of the utmost sophistication and analytical power. Now our choice as a planetary culture is a simple one: Go green or die.